Polo

(See front cover)

Last week in the mild continuous fete that constitutes summer life on Long Island, one activity gained increasing importance. Many incidents bespoke it. A stalwart, bronzed gentleman arrived in Manhattan on the Mauretania--Gerald Balding, contender for No. 2 on the English international polo team. He was a little ahead of his teammates, but they were starting too. Their 67 ponies were on the way over on the S. S. Minnetonka. Another foreign team, an extraordinary one made up of four brothers Ashton from Australia--Philip, Geoffrey, James, Robert--all about the same size, closely resembling each other, ranked at 26 goals, were on hand to see and lend color to the summer's events. At Sands Point, and on the spacious turf overlooked by the stone terrace and colonial portico of Piping Rock Club (see map, p. 25), test matches between candidates for the U. S. team went on with much earnestness. People watching from cars parked along the sideboards were increasingly numerous and interested. The matches with England, to be played at Meadow Brook--climax not only of this season but of three years of polo preparation--were only three weeks off.

It is the test matches that Long Islanders mean when, after lunch, they suggest "going over to see the polo." The actual team this year will not be picked until the night before the first game, but the men on it will be chosen from the "Red" and "White" teams which confront each other as tentative units, constantly rearranged. Thomas Hitchcock Jr., captain of the U. S. team and chairman of the Defense Committee, had made clear that he would not consider anyone as trying out for a specific position. His purpose in the test matches was to arrive at combinations that worked well and to pick from them one supreme combination. The only man who, barring injury, is sure to be on the team, probably at No. 3, is Hitchcock himself. The other candidates proceeded last week with practice under his watchful eye-- varying groups of brilliant and often erratic individuals. Critics could only guess that on present showing the team would be Eric Pedley of California at No. 1, young Earle Hopping No. 2, Hitchcock No. 3, Winston Guest No. 4.

There were contestants who made this guess at a line-up uncertain. Little George H. ("Pete") Bostwick, famed gentleman jockey, had shown up well at No. 1 in the early tests. He is so small he cannot hit the ball far, but No. 1 does not need to hit far--his job is to take a long pass and run it in with an accurate short one. Bostwick, wonderful in the saddle, hits very straight. Elmer Boeseke of California might get on at No. 2 because he works so well with his fellow-Californian, Pedley. Pedley was playing the flashiest game of his life, averaging almost as much distance as Hitchcock on his full-hit shots, often scoring more goals than all the other men on his side put together.

This year's will be the first International team since 1909 to go into action without the iron-wristed centaur-rider, Devereux Milburn. The polo feudality that was once built around Milburn now centres about Hitchcock. More, it centres about three Hitchcocks--the son who is captain, the father whose duties on the Defense Committee are to see that the ponies are properly trained and stabled; and the mother, polo's matriarch, the captain's teacher, a word from whom at the dinner table might well settle a point in strategy, even a contested place on the team.

Mrs. Thomas Hitchcock Sr. was Louise Eustis of New Orleans. Her husband, third son of a Thomas Hitchcock who worked on the editorial staff of the New York Sun under Charles Dana, was one of the young Newport sports of 1886 who organized and played on the first U. S. international team. She started her son Thomas playing as soon as he was old enough to swing a mallet. She helped young Douglas Burden and Cornelius Vanderbilt ("Sonny") Whitney to learn the game too.

This trio were original Meadow Larks, as Meadow Brook's younger generation has since been called. They started playing in 1910.

Mr. & Mrs. Hitchcock, F. S. Skiddy von Stade Sr. and other fathers and an occasional mother played against the Meadow-Larks. Thomas Hitchcock Jr. grew up and went to War. For a while there were no Meadow Larks. Then the second Hitchcock boy, Francis ("Frankie"), was big enough to start.* When he was going to school in Aiken, S. C. his mother sent him mallets and balls enough for two teams. They played on bicycles on a red clay field. Later Frankie had a hard fall that ended his riding for the time, but the boys who had played with him, still trained by Mrs. Hitchcock, developed into the Old Aiken team which last year carried off the Junior championship, the Westbury Challenge Cup and the Herbert Memorial trophy.

Boys are always playing polo on the Hitchcock field. Even during the juvenile depopulation that falls upon Long Island in August because mothers mysteriously believe this to be an unhealthy season, young candidates for next year's Meadow Lark Club are being watched by Mrs. Hitchcock and coached by a onetime British cavalry sergeant named Gaylord. On the present squad, potential internationalists of the future, are Skiddy von Stade Jr., Julian Peabody Jr. (a Hitchcock grandson), Devereux Milburn Jr., Jack Milburn, David Dows Jr., Jimmy Curtis, Marshall Field Jr., Coolidge Chapin, Charlie von Stade, Jack Windmill, Nelson Brown, Scott Truesdale and the Gerry twins. On the international squad itself are six onetime Meadow Larks: J. C. Rathborne, Stewart Iglehart, J. P. Mills, Pete Bostwick, Winston Guest, Earle Hopping. Mrs. Hitchcock cannot play this year because she broke her arm last fall in a Virginia hunt but she perches on the fence almost every day to watch and coach her present crop of youngsters.

Vital, active, with iron-grey, curly, bobbed hair, Mrs. Hitchcock wears riding boots and breeches through most summer days. At 65 she still talks in the soft New Orleans drawl of her girlhood. She and her husband and son are thorough refutations of the tradition that polo, game of the rich, is controlled by snobs. The Hitchcock influence is largely responsible for the new feeling that real polo talent from anywhere in the land is welcome on Long Island to help defend the Cup. At least one Californian seems sure to be on the team this year, for the first time. And among others invited to join the international squad this year was Cecil Smith, Texas cowboy, a natural-born No. 2.

That the team will be picked from a national rather than an exclusively Meadow Brook squad is a salute to the British. After repeated defeats the British have accepted the introduction of hard-riding, bumping, slashing and swatting to the "gentleman's game." Particularly they have tried to develop the Milburn-Hitch-cock style of tremendous hitting.

Since many of them have been army officers. used to conventional army saddles, they sit back when riding after the ball but when it comes time to hit they hoist themselves out of the saddle and smite amain. As Editor Peter Vischer of authoritative Polo says: "None of them hit from arm chairs." Balding is a long hitter and so are Pat Roark and, proverbially, Lewis Lacey. the Canadian-born Argentine. Richard George is still competing with Aidan Roard for No. 1. Like the U. S. team, the Englishmen have decided not to announce their lineup until the night before the first game (Sept. 6), The British leader, Capt. Charles H. Tremayne, a pleasant, soldierly person from Cornwall, will not put him self on his team. Last week on the eve of sailing he was cheerful if not confident. His most comforting thought: The British ponies are fast ones this time, not definitely outclassed by the expensive U. S. mounts as in the past.

*Last week his engagement was announced (see p. 42).

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